Channel Frederator Blog

Just in time for ComiCon, Javier Lopez Duprey gives Channel Frederator “Trigger Happy” - a short and sweet short about a good guy gone bad.

Channel Frederator: Where did you get the idea for “Trigger Happy”?

Javier Lopez Duprey: I got the idea while I was in the middle of the superhero craze. I was wondering when the next Spiderman or Batman would be coming out and I immediately thought that it would be great to do something related to superheroes. Then I thought about how I could tell a different story than that which I have already seen. So I came up with a world that required heroes to be licensed and a main character that wanted to be good, but could not help being bad.

CF: What was your favorite part of making the film?

JLD: My favorite part had to be animating the film. Coming up with how the gun would move and [Read more…]

“Does a Ross Bolinger animate in the woods?” Yes, yes he does. Here’s the scoop on your new favorite animated web series, Pencilmation.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Ross Bolinger: I’m going into my senior year at the School of Visual Arts.

CF: What has influenced your style the most?

RB: Graphically, I would say a lot of early animation has influenced my work…the early Mickey Mouse and Felix cartoons–back when Ub Iwerks would sit down and whip out an entire Mickey cartoon single handedly, drawing straight ahead and not planning so much. Capturing that spontaneity interests me.

Buster Keaton sought to preserve that same spontaneity in film, and I try to aim for some of that as well since my style is so simple and because I am working alone. I also get a lot of influence from listening to music and reading. I read ten times more than I watch cartoons or draw. (Maybe [Read more…]

Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins loves cartoons!

Back in June, Collins wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal called “Inspired by a Bunny Wabbit” which explained how his poetry has been influenced by cartoons.

“…my own poetry would have not developed in the direction it did, for better or worse, were it not for the spell that was cast over me as a boy by Warner Bros. cartoons. The very first time I heard the pulse-quickening blast of the zany theme music by Carl Stalling–enough to bring any American boy to attention–and saw the colorful bull’s-eye emblazoned on the big screen, I was hooked.”

The article includes the poems “Bugs”, “Porky”, “Elmer”, and “Daffy” (from his first collection, Pokerface).

Porky
Happy only
when he is gardening alone
far from conversation
and the terrible stammering
far from Petunia, nag and tease
just resting on a hoe
unembarrassed
as he contemplates
the blue background of his flat world –
a Zen pig.

So, I was going to post [Read more…]